


Lay me To the Ground

by por_queeee



Series: A Hard Way to Fall [3]
Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, FIx It, M/M, Post-Seine, Slash, WIP, au - Javert survives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-01
Updated: 2014-10-22
Packaged: 2018-02-19 11:06:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2386106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/por_queeee/pseuds/por_queeee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They met in Toulon, in Montreuil, and in Paris. After a failed jump into the Seine, Javert knows who he is even less than he knows who Jean Valjean is, or who Madeleine was. </p><p>Currently a WIP. Rated explicit for later chapters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I know it's been a while since the last installment. I have been busy. This probably sucks, please enjoy.

__

Paris, June 1832

When Javert wakes he is in pain, in a strange bed, with the face of Jean Valjean hovering above him like a nervous moon.

“You are awake?” Says Valjean. He himself looks haggard, clothing and hair disheveled.

The words do not register with Javert, whose mind is churning with confusion. The Pont au Change, this he remembers well enough. And then Valjean’s approaching voice behind him, trying to call him from the ledge.

He had— turned, had looked with sorrow at the man running towards him. A man he had always assumed to know, and yet been so consistently wrong about.

And he had jumped.

He attempts to sit with a wince, rubbing at his head. There is light through the crack in the curtains, bouncing against his eyes hard and persistent. “How?“ He is not yet gathered enough to ask more.

Valjean still has not moved away, but his eyes lower from Javert’s face for one moment, as if considering. His lips tighten. “I caught you.” The accompanying expression is somber. “When you fell.”

 _Fell_. Javert suppresses a bitter laugh, but does not correct him. Valjean is not stupid enough to believe that is what happened.

Sitting up only serves to worsen the splitting pain in his head. He gives up, slumps back into the overstuffed pillow and stares at the ceiling, and at least his restless movements have led Valjean’s hovering face to retreat.  
“If you caught me, then why do I feel like this?” He manages. Every beat of his heart pulses in his head. He can see his ankle is bandaged where it peeks from beneath the covers; he supposes it hurts moderately more than the rest of him, but it is difficult to say.

Valjean ducks his head. He seems as ill at ease as Javert, and no wonder, to have his enemy sleeping beneath his roof. “I barely managed. I grabbed your foot and,” here he looks somewhat embarrassed, “you swung into the side of the bridge quite hard. It knocked you out, in fact- I could not wake you until we were here, and even then you could barely limp inside before you were asleep again.”

Javert blinks hazily. It sounds right; he does not remember a fall, only a jump. Getting here he does not remember at all; no matter how he tries to prize the gauze from his mind, it remains clouded. By sleep, by pain, he does not know. 

He would like to run. He is in a dressing gown that is not his, in the home of a man he previously swore to apprehend.

“I wish you would stop saving my life,” he murmurs. He does not have the energy for pretenses. How strange, to sit in the same room after all this time. He thinks of the barricade, of Valjean cutting his bonds. He thinks of Montreuil-sur-Mer, and Madeleine cleaning his wounds, minor though they were.

“And I wish you would stop throwing it away,” returns Valjean tiredly. Javert peers at him from the corner of his eye. He looks half dead himself, greying hair mussed, bags beneath his eyes, clothing unkempt.

There are a few moments of silence. He has no interest in discussing why he jumped with this man. How can Valjean understand what it is to find that all you have lived for is a lie? “How long was I asleep?” He manages finally. He looks resentfully through the small window by his bed, draws the curtain aside with his hand. He cannot tell where, exactly, he is. 

“A full day and night. You woke several times to use the chamber pot- You do not remember?”

He shakes his head, letting the curtain fall more-or-less closed. The throbbing in his head turns to a knife at the movement and he winces. Valjean’s face returns to his orbit again, examining him, clearly concerned, and it sends a fresh terror through him. Hate, hate is what that face should bear, and is not the absence of that hate the reason he could not take living?

“I will get you a doctor as soon as possible,” promises Valjean hastily, seeming to mistake his secondary expression for pain as well. “It has been hard, they are occupied with the aftermath of— the other night.”

Javert flinches, tries again to sit and this time succeeds. “You will not. I must- leave-“ He scans the room in panic for his clothing, his boots, starts to stand but finds Valjean standing to press him firmly back to the bed. “Unhand me,” he snaps, a frightened dog, and Valjean complies. 

The wounded look on the broad face is too familiar, for all the years since he’s seen it. 

“I am sorry” Valjean says, hands raised in placation, as if Javert is a frothing stallion to be calmed. “But I can not let you leave until I know you are alright.”

Javert bristles, but with Valjean towering over him he knows it is useless. Where would he go? Back to the Seine, in naught but a nightgown? Back to his own lodgings, to a life he gave up? Javert the inspector once more, but this time with the knowledge that law is not absolute, that men can change?

That any man can change, it appears, but himself.

He lays back into the narrow bed as one would lay a corpse into a coffin. 

“Why do you care, Valjean?” He asks tiredly. Defeated.

Valjean rests his hand on the back of the chair he had been sitting in until Javert’s outburst. “Is it so strange that I should? I would do the same for any man I saw jumping to his death.”

Javert snorts. “Of course you would.”

Valjean opens his mouth as if he will say more, and then closes it. The weight of his eyes is entirely different than in M-sur-M, in Toulon. It still fills him with hot shame, but of a different kind. It is as if Valjean was sent by god to punish him, and has he not thought so often enough before? 

Being pulled from that bridge should seem a mercy to many men, but to him it seems punishment indeed. Being forced to live with his wretched decisions, his innumerable faults.

“You must be hungry,” murmurs Valjean, breaking his thoughts. “I will fetch you some bread and water.” He turns to leave, but hesitates at the door, clearly torn. The broad shoulders are a hunched line of worry.

“I will not try to leave,” says Javert with exasperation. He has been saved- or damned- for a reason. He has not the heart to move, let alone to leave. 

Valjean nods tentatively, and leaves.

The room is far more tolerable when empty.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------

For two days he takes his meals in sullen silence, refusing to say more than is strictly necessary to Valjean, who finds as many excuses as possible to come to him. He supposes he is in a guest room. He is silent, partially because there is nothing to say, and partially because he is hoping Valjean will tire of it and kick him out. Instead he receives endless visits, the curly grey head poking round the doorframe with books in hand, or fresh bread, or new changes of ill-fitting clothes.

Sometimes he hears a woman’s voice beyond his room. It is the prostitute’s daughter, he knows, Cosette. He cannot make out if she lives here or merely visits. He does not ask. He does not ask about the boy Valjean carried through the sewers.

His time is spent staring at the ceiling, silently battling. The voices of God, Valjean, Madeleine, Javert himself when he was young and idealistic, Javert old and tired. Occasionally he will flip through the rubbish Valjean brings him to read, but he always places it exactly as it was on the bed stand, so that it appears ignored. It is on the third day that Valjean brings the promised doctor, the one he had insisted he did not need. The pain in his head is gone, and most of the soreness, though he still limps on the bandaged ankle.

“You’ve what?” He grits when Valjean comes in to reveal the news.

“I have found a doctor.” Repeats Valjean. His hands are on his hips, and he looks steadfast and determined. Javert had hoped the idiot had given up. He has no urge to explain how he came by these injuries, nor to be poked and prodded.  


“I am perfectly fine, I’ve told you,” he hisses. “For gods’ sake, send him away.”  


Valjean doesn’t flinch. “I will go fetch him from the sitting room,” he says simply.  


When the doctor comes in, followed by Valjean, Javert is sitting with his legs over the edge of the narrow bed. He is healthy enough, he has told Valjean. Healthy in body if not soul or mind, but what heed has Javert taken of these things in the past?

The doctor is a spritely little man, certainly nearing seventy. The creases in his face make Valjean’s roadmap of a visage look smooth. He carries in his right hand a stout black hat, in his left a leather medicine bag of the type often employed for home visits. The way he looks at Javert is best described as a tradesman taking stock of his goods, though not unkindly.

“Well, so this is the mysterious patient, then.” He says, busily beginning to unpack his bag on the small writing desk in the corner. Javert cannot help but glower in Valjean’s general direction.

“Monsieur le Docteur” he says carefully, “I am not a patient. I am fine.”

The doctor smiles wryly, shuffling to the side of the bed. “Well then Monsieur, I am sure you will not mind a quick physical examination. Your brother here has employed me, needlessly or not we shall see.” 

Javert pauses. His lips twitch at the term, “ _brother.”_ Finally he nods a jerky assent. 

He has felt the sudden deflation of any desire to oppose, like a dwindling of the last sparks in the fire. What pride has he left? And if he cooperates and is proven healthy, then surely Valjean will finally tell him to leave. Surely he will be forced into the street, as he deserves, perhaps to toil in unnamed fields for the rest of his days. Low, after all, that is in his blood. 

The examination is quick but thorough. The doctor, who does not give his name, directs Javert efficiently; look this way, look that way. Cough now. Follow my finger with your eyes. Give me your wrist. The commands are short, and Javert complies blankly. 

Valjean watches the whole thing, even when Javert is asked to remove his shirt. He knows there are new scars there, since the last time this man saw him. The gaze is inscrutable. The way his arms are crossed- it reminds Javert, with a sting, of Monsieur Madeleine’s silent confidence. And yet when the knobby fingers of the old man probe his ankle, and he hisses in surprised pain, Valjean’s face morphs to something else. Concern. The fool, he even takes a step forward, frozen in place only by the doctor’s raised hand. 

“It is fine” grits Javert. “Is it not, Monsieur?” 

The doctor nods thoughtfully, stepping back to survey Javert one last time. “The bruise on his head—“ Javert’s hand moves unconsciously to the tender spot. “Was he unconscious after that blow?” 

Valjean adjusts his stance, wringing his large hands. With the anxiety, Javert can see the peasant in him. “Yes. I attempted to wake him up, but . . .” 

The doctor tuts, moving to pack up the gleaming metal instruments, few of which were used. “Dangerous. He most likely had a concussion- he could have suffered brain damage, or even died in the night.” 

Valjean seems to pale. 

“Still, he is past that now. A few bruised ribs, it seems, and the tendons in his ankle have been sprained. He need only keep off it for a few weeks and it will heal.”  
Valjean’s face relaxes. Javert cannot think to call it relief. Perhaps only if it is relief that he is well enough to leave.  


Valjean claps a small jingling bag into the doctor’s hand, and then shakes the other effusively. “Thank you, Monsieur le Docteur.” His name was never given. Javert imagines that neither were theirs, not if the size of the bag of coins is anything to go by.  


The old man seems amused, shoving the bag into the pocket of his coat. “Ah yes, it is much trouble to earn a day’s wages in the course of thirty minutes.”  


Valjean goes to lead the man out, and just like that Javert is alone again. He stares at nothing in particular on the wall. And then he stands, mechanically, with no real sense of what he is doing, and moves to the drawer which he now knows contains his uniform.  


He does not know where he plans to go, only that he must leave. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is a bit slower moving. Thank you to everyone reading!

It takes only a few moments to don his uniform, mechanical as the motions are to him. He laces his boots with precision; a disquieted mind is no impediment to routine. But the rub of cloth on his skin has been so familiar these past years, and now it feels a mockery. But these are the only clothes in the room that are not Valjean’s.

When he opens the door to leave the little room he is greeted by an empty hallway, long and narrow, with several doors along each side. The wood flooring, as in the room he was in, is quite fine though scarred here and there. He limps stiffly to the staircase, visible around the bend. 

It is simple; Valjean had brought him the promised doctor. He had been pronounced to be in good health. There remains no reason, now, for Valjean to keep him here. 

He notes that there are no voices, and that is well, for perhaps Valjean will not be near the door. Is it cowardly of him to leave without thanking Valjean? He does not know. It is not something he asked of Valjean, to be given back this mangled form of his life. 

Valjean comes through an adjoining door right as he comes to the base of the stairs. The look of surprise on the lined face is followed summarily by confusion, as his eyes flit from Javert’s uniform to his boots.

“Javert?”

Javert clears his throat. “The doctor says I am well. I will be going.”

Valjean’s eyebrows raise, and it is clear he does not follow the logic. Javert trails his eyes over the fine _boiserie_ , the sunlit rooms he can see through nearby doorways. Valjean’s house on the Rue Plumet, for he is now certain that this is where they are, does not lack for craftsmanship.

“I will not overstay my welcome.”

Valjean still has not moved, blocking Javert from dismounting the final step and returning to his life, such as it is. “You have not.”

His fingers squeeze the painted bannister reflexively. He turns his head back to look, to look down at Valjean’s weathered face. He does not like looking down his nose at this man, a thing that he would have relished in the past. It is too surreal, to interact with Valjean now, after all of this. He does not like to again see a man where he once saw only a cornered fox.

“Valjean. Move.” The words are cold but choked. His head is swimming.  
Valjean does not move. 

“Where do you intend to go?”

Javert’s shrug is uncharacteristically loose. “I do not know.”

“Back to the police?”

“I tell you I do not know.”

Valjean still does not move. His eyes search Javert’s face, and finally Javert can take it no more. “What do you want- A promise I am not going back to the river? That I will not hurl myself into the Seine?” 

A jerk, Valjean visibly taken aback. An involuntary wince, slight but there, at the reference to what Javert had intended. 

“I will not kill myself, Valjean” Javert hisses. “You took the will for that from me, as you have taken all else.”

Valjean looks at him a moment more, those eyes full of infinite sadness, and then stands aside. The way is cleared. Javert breezes past, and through the door.

He walks quickly at first, sore ankle managed as best he can, no direction in mind and breast swelled with tight anxiety. There is nowhere for him to go. There is nowhere he belongs. The Palais du Justice is no longer his home, nor is the small room he rented and used for nothing but sleep. His pace middles, and then slows. 

He feels for the first time not lost, but adrift.

It is dark when he finds himself sitting on the stone steps to the house on the Rue Plumet, hunched pathetically over to cradle his head in his hands. But it is darkest when the door behind him opens, and he turns as if startled from a reverie to see Valjean limned by candlelight and looking down on him.

Valjean stands aside. The invitation is as clear as an extended hand would be, and so is the choice.

Javert stands slowly, and feels every year of his age and every barb of his decisions. They pierce him so finely as to leave no visible wound, but pierce they do, and the river is a steady thrum around him.

He goes in. Valjean shuts the door behind them.

\------------------------------------------------------------------

He cannot stand it— sitting here, in Valjean’s house, doing nothing of use. Valjean recovered for him his meager personal possessions some time ago, but they do not add any more comfort than they did in his own cramped rooms. He doesn’t even understand what he is doing here; he has never explicitly discussed the arrangement with Valjean. Somehow it is simply understood that he is to stay here, for the time being. On his part because he has nowhere else to go, but on Valjean’s part… He does not know.

The days pass, albeit slowly. They don’t talk much, because casual conversation is not easy for them. Valjean is often in the small back garden, weeding and pruning, grafting and plucking. Javert will watch this from the window by his bed, whatever book he is forcing himself to read resting in his lap. To see him toil like this, such a large man performing such a task with tenderness, is fascinating purely in its strangeness. 

It is the middle of fall now already, and Valjean looks particularly blissful in his ministrations to some feeble spinach rosettes. He is not seeing to the flowers today, but to his little _potager, _wearing old worn out trousers and a jacket with poorly-sewn holes beneath the arms. He looks very much the peasant, with his look of unthinking contentment, calloused hands plucking weeds out root and all.__

__Valjean stands, dusting his hands off on his dirty trousers with a look of satisfaction. Cosette’s visits, and the garden. These are the only things that seem to wipe away the look of sad resignation he bears at all other times. Javert wonders if that sadness stems from Cosette’s absence, living as she is in rooms closer to her injured suitor, or from his own presence._ _

____

\------------------------------------------------------------------

That night Valjean brings up a plate of food, as is usual now. He sets it on the desk next to the small rosary Javert has been stubbornly avoiding, and Javert watches from the chair where he sits, sees how his shirtsleeves are rolled up, how there is a spot of dirt still on his thumb.

Valjean pauses, still leaning over the desk. Javert thinks he is looking at the rosary perhaps. He ignores him carefully, even when Valjean turns to face him.

“I went to the prefecture of police today.” 

Javert lowers his book in slow shock. A nervous tremor rakes him over. “What?” His initial thought is that Valjean has attempted to turn himself in. They’ve already had that discussion, Valjean trying to surmise the cause of Javert’s malaise. Offering, as he had that night, to go freely into his custody. But that’s not it, it can’t be, or Valjean would not be standing here, gazing at him with that familiar air of distance.

Valjean looks at him steadily. “I went to the prefecture of police. I informed them that you are alive.”

Javert stands, mechanically. He is almost gratified to see Valjean tense. His voice is suffused with cold anger as he speaks. “And how did you explain my absence? Did you tell them that I am living in the house of a convict, after failing even to kill myself?”

Valjean flinches at the allusion. He always flinches at the mention of Javert on the bridge, just so slightly. But still he leans against the desk. “No. I told them that you had been assaulted, and so unwell the past few months that you couldn’t remember your own name. I said that you had only recently come back to yourself enough to send a message.”

“Why?” He sets his book down gingerly on the nightstand, to keep himself from slamming it. “It is dangerous for you to even go in such a place-“

“No. Nobody would see me now and think ‘criminal’ but you.” Valjean says quietly. Javert’s eyes snap up to meet his gaze. “I went because it seemed right. Your friends have surely been mourning.”

Javert can’t suppress the sneer. “The few friends I have are policemen, and all of them have families of their own to be concerned with. I am the kind of man who slips through the cracks with no fanfare, Valjean. I am not _needed_ by anyone.” Still his mind flashes to Bedeaux, to Lebas. They are good men, and he had sometimes taken a meal with them, had laughed with them such as he knew how. Even young Gregoire- for he will always be so in Javert’s mind- has stayed in touch. Even went so far as to invite Javert to his wedding. 

He had not thought of them until now, as full as his mind was with his own confusion. And yet the conclusion was the same; he did not matter enough to be missed much. The kind of man people might wear black crepe for out of obligation, perhaps even admiration, but never deep grief.

Valjean’s countenance is heavy with what seems not exactly like pity. Guilt, rather. “I have been assured you will have a position, should you return.” 

Now Javert’s jaw is truly set. He rises from his chair almost drunkenly, his fingers working at the palms of his hands. “I can not. I can not go back to that life.”

“You are clearly unhappy being idle- your mind is always working. I see you watch me in the garden.” Javert’s cheeks heat and he must break eye contact. “I see your torment. If you were happy to sit still all day, I would be content with that just as easily. But you are not.”

“I can not go back when it is a lie!” says Javert. “Don’t you see? Morality has been easy for you; mercy has been easy for you. It is not for me. Law was my morality, judgment my mercy. I was blind for so long, thinking you were only a clever monster. You proved me wrong, Valjean! You saved my life, you saved that boy’s life, and then you would willingly have gone back to the galleys despite your age. I look back at my life and I see only the people I might have wronged, with my ‘perfect’ judgment. And what can I do now, now that you have saved me again?” He is trembling, by the time he finishes.

Valjean looks startled by the outburst. It is the first time Javert has given any indication of why he chose the Seine. “I hated you,” adds Javert. “I hated you for Montreuil-sur-Mer. And I let that color my ‘impartiality’ even further. I was hungry to see you in chains.”

Javert can barely believe what he said, that he in any way acknowledged the things they did. 

“You deserved to hate me,” mutters Valjean. “I was selfish. And there were things I took that- you had no means to agree to.” His hand grips the edge of the desk behind him tightly, as if for support. “I am not a saint. Even there, you confused me with one often; well, I have never been a saint.”

Javert’s throat works fruitlessly. 

“Listen to me, now.” Says Valjean quietly, looking at him. The flicker of the candle Javert has been reading by creates strange blocks of shadow, heightening the misery of Valjean’s face. “You have asked me again and again why I let you stay here. It’s because you know me.”

Valjean raises a hand to silence any protest Javert might make. “Better, at least, than others. Better than even my Cosette, who sees only her old papa. I am still selfish, to want to hear my name spoken out loud. There is a part of me, the pruner of Faverolles, which is dead and buried. But at least you know what came after.”

Javert sinks back into his chair mutely. He is suffused with disbelief and a kind of fear of Valjean’s words. A drop of liquid wax slides down the candle.

“And then, there is the other thing. My debt to you.”

“You owe me nothing, Valjean.” Javert mutters bitterly, turning his head away.

Valjean is coming closer, the creaks of the floor betray that much. Javert refuses still to turn his face, but the air by his arm is warmer, and he can hear Valjean’s even breathing. 

“I owe you because of those nights in Montreuil.”

Javert’s teeth are clenched tightly. His arms itch with the stillness he maintains.

“It was never revenge that drove my actions. It was my own weaknesses. I had convinced myself that you . . . Knew about me, who I was. I could tell you suspected me, when we first met. And I let myself think that meant that you knew, at least inwardly. I let myself think you wanted me, and not Madeleine.”

Javert can hear how harsh his own breath is in his ears. His eyes are so focused on the windowsill that he sees nothing at all. He doesn’t want to say anything. He doesn’t want to acknowledge that they ever touched, doesn’t want to acknowledge the sin he has tried so hard to pray away. The number of times he went to confessional and pleaded with the priest for his soul.

There is a long silence and then exhale, either of frustration or resignation. Footsteps move towards the door, and then pause. 

“I told them you might not have the energy yet for your duties as Inspector. They said you were welcome to assist with paperwork.” Says Valjean quietly. And then he is gone, and Javert stalks to the door and shuts it. He picks up the rosary from the desk gently. 

He returns to work a few days later, at a different station that needs help with a backlog of files.


End file.
